351 
)27 
3py 1 



TENTH BIENNIAL E.EPORT 






BOARD OF CURATORS 
\ 



Historical Society 



STATE OF IOWA, 



TO THE QOVERNOR. 



NOVEMBER 16, 1876. 



DES MOINES: 

B. P. CLARKSON, STATE PRINTER. 

1876. 



1875.] STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 33 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HISTOEY OF THE LOUISIANA 

PUECHASE. 



An Address delivered before the State Historical Society of low a^ 

at Iowa City ^ June 29th, 1874, on the occasion of their 

Seventeenth Annual Meeting. 



BY THE HON. HENRY CLAY DEAK. 

Gentlemen of the Iowa State Historical Society : — Less than 
a half century has passed since Iowa was one grand landscape of flow- 
ers, interspersed with a mere selvage of forests, diversified with beau- 
tiful streams of water, occupied by roaming tribes of Indians, and the 
wild beasts from which they drew their sustenance. To-day, Iowa is 
the granary of America, the very first in the rank of producers, grow- 
ing a larger combined amount of the cereals than any other State in 
the Union, excepting only Illinois, which was admitted as a State in 
the Union, while Iowa was yet a comparatively unexplored wilderness. 

History presents no parallel to the wonderful physical development 
and growth of your State — a growth w'hich is developing and a devel- 
opment still growing. Unicpie in its liistory which is the romance of 
a political philosophy that must ultimately govern the world, the mar- 
velous growth of Iowa is but the natural reflex of her history. 

The discovery of America marked a new era in the history of the 
world's physical existence. But infinite in its range of moral and in- 
tellectual culture and progress was the result of civilization and Lib- 
erty, the fairest, purest and most exalted of all of the daughters of 
religion. The right of property by discovery was abandoned in the 
higher doctrine that "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, 
and they that dwell therein." Only the great events in which truth 
and justice have been the arbiters, aro wortliy of record or remembrance 
among nations or men. The combinations of circumstances which gave 
to your State its high rank among civilized nations wears the air of ro- 
mance which is at best but a ieeble imitation of truth, for truth is 
Btranger than fiction. The couvulsious of the French government, our 
5 



34 STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [No. 24. 

ancient and most faithful ally, ffave to the Federal UnioQ the Louisiana 
Territory. The great spirit of Jefferson, with the wisdom and foresight 
of the philosopher and statesman, sought the extension of the area of 
free government, choosing rather to follow the spirit than the letter of 
the Constitution, to acquire half a continent dedicated to self govern- 
ment. The French revolution was the occasion, the missionary spirit 
of republican government was the cause, which made Iowa the garden 
of America. In the inception of the French revolution, the chief icon- 
oclasts scarcely dreamed of the compass, extent and magnitude of their 
work of destruction ; realizing still less of the magnificence of that 
superstructure of liberty, which failing in their own land, should be 
reared in the wilderness of an unexplored territory, nominally held by 
Fran«e, really occupied in common byjwild beasts and savages. Athe- 
ism, growing weary of the domination of church usurpation, i;nfitly 
enough, purporting to represent, govern and transmit the simple, just and 
universal religion of Christ, foolishly made war upon God, because too 
cowardly to assail the wrongs of the Hierarchy ; ridiculed the authen- 
ticity and genuineness of Divine lievelation, which is the only guaran- 
tee of free government and the equal rights of man. This Atheism 
was the fountain from which the French revolution in all its stages 
drew its sustenance. 

That which was called the church was a strange compound of the 
superstition, idolatry and ferocity of the old Paganism, mingled with 
the visionary metaphysics of the Pagan philosophers, the ceremonious 
formalities and gorgeous temple worship of the Jews, with the unnat- 
urally interwoven and grossly misappropriated doctrine of Moses and 
the prophets, of Christ and the Apostles, This church was the mis- 
tress of Kings and Emporers, Oligarchs and Aristocrats, who invoked 
its authority to enslave the masses, wlio worshipped at its shrine, and 
yielded abject submission to its commands. Voltaire, though not the 
first to assail, was beyond all comparison the ablest of all the assailants 
of the authority of the church. Ilis mode of attack was powerful and 
overwhelming. The object of his attack was a mistake, and therefore 
not enduring. Had he attacked the corruptions of the church, the Bible 
and Christianity would have been his invincible allies, whose conquest 
would have been enduring and eternal. But Voltaire chose otherwise; 
he attacked the Bible, ridiculed its teachings, scoffed at its authority, 
burlesqued in cynical ferocity its great author and His simple Apos- 
tles. The church was wounded in its vitals, but Christianity arose from 
the fire all the purer from its contact with the fiames. Fenelon, Bour- 
daloe, Massilon, Saurin, liossuet, yet live as the lights of the temple 
whose shekinah will burn in dazzling glory long after the fire of the 
sun has been quenched by weary ages. But Voltaire did his herculean 
task well. The corruptions of the church were held up to public scorn. 

Voltaire was the sovereign of French literature, the French Ben John- 
son of the drama; the Samuel Johnson of her criticism, inimitable in 
history, without comparison in versatility. His keen double-edged 
sword spared neither monarch nor bishop. The champion of neither 
doctrine, sentiments, or establishment, he made general war upon all 
existing things. The torch of his incendiary pen was applied to man- 
sions, palaces, libraries, and museums; to religion, philosophy and his- 
tory, indiscriminately. But in the train of the conflagration he left 



1875.] STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 85 

neither cottage nor tent in which the weary houseless traveler might 
tind shelter from the storm, or rest to his limhs. Volney and Rosseau, 
each as torch bearers of the great chief, did their minor work with 
alacrity and suavity, without his ferocity and without his power. 

Voltaire had been the companion of the German infidel King Fred- 
erick. The companion and at the same time his menial, he surrendered 
his own manliood for the sovereign patronage. The superior sagacity 
and powers of the German monarch gave to Voltaire audacity in his 
attack upon the French hierarchy. But the P"'rench hierarchy was the 
corner stone of the French monarchy. The feudal system was its cita- 
del. The church, the military and royalty, were the trinity of tyrants, 
who must stand or fall together. Under the ferocious attack of Vol- 
taire a skepticism spread everywhere through the French Empire. The 
people, who had no voice in the government, yet by nature born of 
God and ordained to self-government, combined in secret societies for 
self-improvement, self-government, and the protection of their families, 
and the right to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These 
societies spread, grew in numbers, knowledge and power, until there 
was a government within the government stronger than the govern- 
ment itself. 

The profligacy of the French court, the corruptions of the church, 
the overbearing exactions of the feudal lords, growing with enormous 
power, enforced their mandate with an army, cruel and remorseless in 
the execution of the will of the court, and exhausting the resources of 
the industry of the country. The lords temporal and lords spiritual, 
were also lords of the soil, but were exempt from taxation. The dan- 
gerous experiment of freeing any class of property or of men from tax- 
ation was fully tested in France. The universal skepticism of Voltaire 
was followed by the univeral license of Rousseau, which infused into 
the mind of the French people a strange contempt for personal respon- 
sibility to law. 

The French people were divided into two most dangerous and un- 
reasonable parties: the royal party, who were advocates of government 
without liberty, upon the one hand; the revolutionary party, who de- 
clared for liberty without restraint or government, upon the other hand. 
The conflict of authority was felt in every part of the P^mpire, The 
State's General was as.sembled to eflect a compromise, and to secure to 
the people by law what they declared their rights l)y nature. The dif- 
ferences were too great to ))e settled amica1)ly. The king claimed ab- 
solute power to rule by authority of (4od. The ]>eople asserted the 
right to self government by nature, which is but the empire of (Jod. 
The contest was fully inaugurated; jiropositions for settlement only 
lengthened the time, but couM not change the result; only an appeal 
to the God of battles could settle a conflict in which nature and (iod 
were respectively invoked as authority. Long continued power grasped 
by the great hands of strength is soon transferred to the hands of weak 
men who are Vjorn in, buy or bribe their way to place and power. This 
is ever so in governments. Immediately after our own revolution, 
Washington complained of the exceeding mediocre of Congress as 
compared with the giants who led the van of the great struggle. The 
great men of the second j)eriod of the American government did not 
appear until the second war with Great 13ritan developed Clay, Web- 



36 STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [No. 24. 

ster and Calhoun. The third great American conflict developed Doug- 
las, Lincoln, Toombs, Alexander and Thaddeus Stevens, Seward, Chase 
and Sumner, with scattered great names here and there; Randolph, 
Pickney and Black. In times like these mere office holding dwarfs a 
great part of our public men, and office seeking dwarfs or corrupts the 
remainder; so it was in the revolution, so it will ever be. 

With the elements of conflict all in subdued commotion, there was 
no great leader in France to crystalize the opposition, nor was one de- 
manded until the aggression ot Louis drove the ruined peo])]e together; 
then the leader came forth — the great Mirabeau, son of Victor de Mi- 
rabeau. By lineage eccentric, extravagant and versatile, by birth de- 
formed, the small-pox made him even more hideous in his childhood. 
Mirabeau had been driven from home, made misei-able by the separation 
of his parents, to school. From school he was arrested under sealed 
lettrescle cachet by the application of his unnatural father. His life 
for years was spent under the arbitrary arrests of the government by 
the connivance of his father, who was fond of calling himself " the 
friend of man." Mirabeau was the natural ofi'spring of oppression. 
The causes of the revolution were the aggregation of his own wrongs, 
and his attack upon the government was the simple defense of his own 
rights. The people had been driven mad by oppression ; their prop- 
erty had been squandered upon the voluptuousness, vices and cruelty of 
kings. Their children had been fed to armies as lambs of the flock are 
fed to ravenous wolves, to gratify revenge and minister to ambition. 
The church was the jackal of kings and armies to hunt down their 
prey. Endurance had wasted its powers. Human nature could bear 
up no longer against the combinations of the lust of power, the tyranny 
of kings, the oppression of the nobility, the hypocrisy of the church 
and the despotism of armies. 

The condition of France was only difierent from that of an oriental 
despotism, as a reality is difterent from a sham which conceals a wrong 
inflicted only difterent in pretense. France had no real representation. 
Her elections were controlled by violence and fraud. There was no 
trial by jury, nor any fair administration of justice. Letlres de cachet 
destroyed the security of the liberty of the person, without regard to 
age or sex. 

The old feudal laws of remorseless execution still held the tenantry 
as slaves. " The predial serfs of Champagne were counted with the 
cattle on the estates." The nobility and clergy were exempt from 
taxation. Upon the farniers and laborers, with the untitled people, 
were laid all the burdens of church and state. General suftering pre- 
vailed ; the church, the court, and the armies absorbed the money. 
Taxes were the only share had by the people in the government. The 
government ought to have been overthrown an age before. But to a 
people long inured to oppression, it required education to make them 
free. They first lose their liberty, and endure until custom and en- 
durance destroy their love of liberty, then generations follow who have 
lost even the knowledge of liberty. 

Mirabeau came opportunely. He denounced the king, and Avas 
therefore called a rebel. He hurled anathemas at the corruptions of the 
church, and demanded the confiscations of vast estates, wrested from 
the people, and was therefore denounced as an infidel and repudiator 



1875.] STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 37 

of vested rights. When tlie king threatened the personal safety of the 
members of the convention, jNIirabeau moved that the viohation of the 
personal safety of any of the members of that body should be ac- 
counted worthy of death, and met the throne at the threshold of its 
power to defy it, and but for tlie graceful submisson- of the king, Mira- 
beau would have been an outlaw. And so it was and is, and ever shall 
be, that men long treated as outlaws become outlaws. Why should it 
be otherwise? Men owe no allegiance to government which offers 
. them no protection. Such is the nature of the contract. Our allegi- 
f ance is thus founded. " We love God because lie iirst loved us." 

The magazine, dry and well filled with powder, was carefully j)laced 
beneath the French throne. Mariabeau went forth with a toiuli and 
applied it. The explosion was that of a volcano heaving up its burn- 
ing lava only to explode again and again and again, until tlirone, 
government, church, state and liberty were alike enveloped in its llames. 
The eloquence of Mirabeau, strange compound of the divine and infer- 
nal, struck down the feudal system. The divine right of kings and 
special privileges of the nobility fell at the same blow. At the command 
of his voice feudal parchments were strewn over the House of the Gen- 
eral Convention by feudal lords, who sought security for their lives in 
the surrender of the estates upon which servants were kept poor and 
starving. Lords surrendered their immemorial privileges. The church 
gladly gave up its property and relinquished her titles in consideration 
y for their safety. The king surrendered his prerogatives, and the people 
secured their natural right to religious liberty. All this without the 
shedding of blood. What Mirabeau would have done with life pro- 
longed, death has left a mistery. The loss of Mirabeau, the orator of 
the Christian era, gave assurance to the nobility, inspired the king with 
fresh courage, and left the people without a leader given to command. 

After Mirabeau came Danton, Marat, and Robespierre, the triune 
fiends of tliC revolution. The first, of coarse eloquence, courage, and 
cruelty, hurried on by his own passions to the guillotine, already clotted 
Avith the blood of his victims, innocent and guilty; old men and beau- 
tiful maidens, alike the victims of his sanguinary cruelty. Marat, the 
empyric, who readily changed his vocation of murder by medicines, to 
murder by law; a wild beast let loose upon society, clothed with 
official power, came to his end by the well directed dagger of Charlotte 
Corday. 

Robespierre, who had led Louis to the block ; the learned idiot, the 
hypocritical monster, wHo paraded his condescending discovery that 
God has some limited share in the governments of men, carried on this 
murderous crusade against law, order, religious liberty, and Inunan 
rights, until the retributive justice of God arrcsteil his munlerous 
career, and mingled his base, wicked blood witli that of the tens of 
thousands who had perished by his murderous hand. The Convention, 
whieli first assembled to assure to tlie people their natural rights and 
to secure liberty, was now an assembly of the representative assassins 
of Europe, establishing law for the ratification of murder, rapine and 
robbery. 

Then came Bonaparte to disj)erse the Convention. He upon whom 
eulogies and denunciation, poetry and riietoric, criticism ami essays, 
the decrees of sovereign councils, the anathemas, of churches, and 



gg STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [No. 24. 

combination of armies, were showei-ed with indiscrimination, came to 
give relief to the people from the horrors they had visited upon them- 
selves. A foreigner, who had cultivated the ambition and love of lib- 
erty of his Roman ancestry; a stranger, wandering from the military 
schools of France in shabby clothing, hungry and careworn, he had 
worked his way into the army, from the army to victory. He won his 
first laurels in the home of his fathers ; he overran Italy with the 
soldiers who had been holding France in terror for a full decade, and 
utilized in conquest the elements which had made Paris hideous with 
anarchy. From Italy to Africa his sunburnt soldiers bore the colors of 
the land of Charlemange to the tomb of the Pharaohs, and were in- 
spired with the sublime suggestion of their leader that forty centuries 
looked down from the summits of the pyramids to witness their prow- 
ess and approve their valor. 

From Egypt, IMajjoleon returned to France, first a soldier of fortune, 
then first consul holding the destiny of France in his grasp, with the 
thrones and dynasties of Europe trembling at his tread. Napoleon was 
at heart a friend to civil and religious liberty. So had he been reared. 
Great, broad, deep, and profound, he instinctively despised the narrow 
views and absurd theories of the monarchists claiming authority of God 
to govern the people, and condemned the mysterious mummeries and 
senseless trappings of the church and the court. Like Mirabeau and 
Jeflersou, Napoleon was a sloven who would in undressing toss his hat 
in one corner of the room and his boots in another. To such a man, 
always expressing his contempt for fops and dandies, the popinjays 
who hang around courts would have no attractions. 

Napoleon feared for the destiny of the French people. Their educa- 
tion had made the monarchy and hierarchy part of their existence. 
'Ihe well doing people could see no safety outside of the monarchy. 
The religious people could hope for salvation only through the estab- 
lishment of the church. Dark and gloomy as were the storms passing 
over the land, far above the storm, immortality and eternal life glowed 
tlirougli the black bosom of the clouds, and the hopes of their children 
and ilie homes of their fathers shone out clear as the sunlight and beau- 
tiful as perpetual spring, beckoning them upward and onv/ard to 
realms of liglit. 

The kingdom of France was no longer. The republic of France was 
reeling tu and fro like a drunken man. All Europe dreaded the rev- 
oluiiunary lieresies of the National xlssembly far more than they dread- 
ed tlie huiiible massacres of the revolution ; for all despotisms are tem- 
ples reared upon human slavery and cemented with blood, whose richest 
music are the groans, sighs and agonies of oppression and its conse- 
quent sutfering. Napoleon trembled for the French colonies, French 
possessions, and French dependencies, especially those of America. 
The Uanadas in the nortli had been wrested from France by England 
Willi the aid of the colonies. 

San Domingo had never added to either the wealth or the glory of 
the French people, who of all civilized people are the least cosmopoli- 
tan in their habit. Their devotion is their mountains, valleys, sea 
home of J^ ranee. France had never reproduced her own greatness in 
America, as the kingdom of great Hritian has done in her colonies. 
Bonaparte dreaded the necessity of the transportation of armies to the 



1875.] STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 39 

western shores of the Atlantic. His experience in Egypt had been un- 
favorable to sea fighting, and Bonaparte was eminently a hero of land 
rather than sea forces. The necessity of the defence of the great Mis- 
sissippi country was exceedingly probable, with the Canadas in the 
north. Her possessions in tlie West India Islands would aliord the 
British a stronghold in the south. Tlie relations of France to Spain 
were equally delicate. Even then there was a contemplated alliance 
between Great Britian and Spain against the Frencli, and Spain held 
Mexico, with all of Spanish America, Cuba, and Florida. The hope of 
regaining the colonies had not yet lost its hold upon Jiritish ambition. 
To hold the Louisiana Territory in the conflicts of the Napoleonic wars, 
then fully planned in the great ambition of the first Consul, was deemed 
])roblematic. The French people knew of the Mississippi country not 
more than the recent generation know of the unexplored mountains of 
the moon. The very recollection of the Mississippi was naturally 
enougli associated with John Law's Mississippi bubble, which had burst 
in ruin over the heads of the French people but little more than half 
a century before. The Mexicans, Americans, Spaniards, British or 
French had no conception of the extent, wealth and resources of this 
wonderful country. But Napoleon finally concluded to strip for the 
contest and conquest of the most enlightened continent of the globe, 
and throw oft' every weight, and placed in market a territory of greater 
extent and magnificence than all the coveted kingdoms of Europe, dis- 
tributed among his kindreds. 

No people ever enjoyed religious liberty, who did not first secure 
civil liberty, to protect it. The rights of conscience, sacred in them- 
selves, are ripened by culture, and naturally seek their own deteuce. 
He who hath not a cultivated conscience, which comes of a cultivated 
mind, will care little for the rights of conscience. 

The colonization of North America was the re-peopleing of another 
Eden with societies well lettered and independent in their modes of 
thought, which begat a keen consciousness — convictions for which 
their fathers suftered death in Europe, and in defence of which they 
imperilled their lives upon the altar of liberty and poured out their 
blood like water spilled upon the ground. The American colonies 
were penal i)risons for certain criminals of the parent government in 
Europe. But the crimes for which they were transported were those 
bold, divine virtues of too pure and of too rich aiul rank a growth to 
flourish on the soil of a despotisjn, under the shadow of tiirones. 

The crime of "worshiping God according to the dictates of their 
conscience ;" the crime of "obeying God rather than man ;" the crime 
of rejecting the doctrine of the "divine right of Kings ;" the crime of 
despising "base submission to unjust laws ;" the crime of rcKisting the 
slavish doctrine of "passive obedience ;" the crime of refusing to join 
in throne worship — king worship — man worship or hero worship. 

Breasting the billows of the ocean and keeping time to the music of 
its storms, witli their songs of liberty and religion, these brave people, 
banished by government, or exiling themselves to the protection of 
heaven, under the guaranty of their natural rights, came to jieople and 
cultivate a continent. They (contemplated with faith, patience, and 
fortitude, the ultimate establishment of an enlighteneil republican gov- 
ernment; a special corporation under tiie government of nature and of 



40 



STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [No. 24. 



God, under the supreme law of our being, that all men are born free 
and equal, and have certain inalienable rights. 

They adopted these maxims, clear as the sun, beautiful as the 
firmament, and enduring as the Deity ; an essential element of the 
manhood of man ; an immortality which shall glow with splendor 
long after the fire of the sun has died out, and "the elements have 
melted with fervent heat." "All the just powers of government are 
derived from the consent of governed." "Resistance to tyrants is obe- 
dience to God." "Equal and exact justice to all men and especial privi- 
leges to none." "All power is inherent in the people." 

These people were scattered over the ocean frontier of a continent, 
surrounded by savages, attacked at their labor by wild beasts, and tread- 
ing through a wilderness of venomous serpents, in an atmosphere pois- 
oned with malaria, the rich outgrowth of a virgin soil which had never 
been disturbed by the plow. 

With what heroism these bold, brave men cast their eyes backward 
through a dense wilderness of thrones, prisons, armies, spies, stakes, 
and gibbets, which had purified liberty, and trained heroes, martyrs, and 
philosophers to educate and lead mankind to this grandest, ultimate 
glorious destiny ! The graves of their persecuted ancesti-y in foreign 
lands became sacred as memorials of duty, and were remembered as 
vestibules through which they traveled darkly into the temple of light. 
Their wild hamlets were schools where the children were taught that 
all men of right ought to be, and of a moral necessity would ultimately 
be, free and govern themselves. 

America was, from its discovery, the land of prisoners. Christopher 
Columbus threw the light of the world upon a new continent only to 
expiate his crime of discovery in a loathsome prison. William Penn 
came with his friendly, peaceful followers to secure his release from 
imprisonment for his devotion to principles inimical to tyrants — the 
son of an admiral, yet the follower of Christ, and the teacher o^ broth- 
erly love, came to America to teach savages by example, " Peace on 
earth, and good will to men." A colony reared upon such a founda- 
tion and administering the government upon such principles, educated 
her people to love liberty, enjoy liberty, and cultivate its knowledge, 
and were schooled to the hardy virtues of freedom which were inter- 
woven in the subtle M'eb of society. 

Republican government grew naturally among such a people, who 
were unconsciously freeing their limbs from the fetters never to be en- 
slaved again. Driven by proscription from the cruelties of Old Eng- 
land, the first settlers of New England were devoted to religion, wbere 
they fled to enjoy it; and however the narrow-minded exclusiveness of 
the religious bigotry from which they suflered failed to teach them 
toleration to others, yet the ancestry who gave to the world Franklin, 
the Adamses, Samuel and Jolin Hancock, Warren, the Edwardses, 
Websters, and Fisher Ames, were the nucleus of a self-government 
which inured immensely to the ultimate independence of the colonies. 
The Ilugenots, driven in exile througli Europe, found a resting place 
in South Carolina, and founded the southern outposts of liberty in the 
colonies. Through persecution and pain, torture and privation, these 
cultivated Christian people were driven over every country in Europe 
in search of safety, until the winds of the ocean drove them to the 



1875.] STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 4| 

Caroliiias. Tempest-tossed in tlie revolutions of Europe, tliey found 
an asylum beyond the reach of the minions of courts, the in<juisitor8 
of the church, and the spies of the army, but never abated their zual 
for liberty. 

Then catne the Dutch to New Holland. A brave people, inured to 
thehanlships and risks of the ocean, who had opened their dykes and 
invited the waters to take possession of their country, rather than to sur- 
render it to invadini; tyrants. In imitation oi' their northern colonial 
brethren, they conunenced the work of crystali/,in<; civilization, educa- 
tion, enterprise, and improvement, preparinu; the way for the ultimate 
Ptrus^irle of the great national birth. In the very heart of the country 
Lord Baltimore came to people Maryland. Weary of European perse- 
cutions, of the adulterous union of church and stale, the conllicts to per- 
petuate or cluinge dynasties and jtersonal governments, created in the 
interest of families and combinations to butcher the people in armies, 
and rob them by taxation, to feed the extravagance and support the 
voluptuousness of nobilities and courts, Lord Baltimore was the founder 
of the tirst of all the colonies who declared the divine right of the lib- 
erty of conscience to all men. With the spirit of their country free as 
the ocean and bold as the winds they added to the gathering army of 
freedom, forming the cordon of liberty along the Atlantic coast. 

Virginia was settled by the hardy yeomanry of England, who carried 
with them the memories of the riglit of trial by jury, and the rights of 
constitutional liberty, which for ages had made Great Britain the cita- 
del of just government in Europe, the only organized jjower on earth 
■which respected the rights of a fair and impartial trial by the peers of 
the accused. Very early the spirit of free thought gained possession 
of the people, and a jealousy of colonial privileges was succeeded by 
the declaration of natural rights, which assumed the right of self-gov- 
ernment. The warlike spirit of this "great and unterritied colony," 
■which Lord Cornwallis was wont to call Virginia, produced Washing- 
ton, a military hero, the most eminent for his virtue in the annals of 
mankind. The encroachments of the church had precipitated a conflict 
between the tithe gatherer and the worshipper at the shrine of a drunken 
priesthood and fox-hunting bishops. Patrick Henry, boin of the occa- 
sion, sprang into the contest and defended the people against the ag- 
gressions of the parsons. 

The revolutionary war was the occasion but not the cause of the lib- 
erty of the American people. The cause was the education of the 
people. The germ of liberty had been transplanted to a virgin soil, 
and grew with its natural growth Just as despotism had grown rankly 
under the fostering care of thrones, hierarchies, and armies. A crys- 
talized government, now under the administration of .leHerson, just 
after the reflex of American Lidejjendence and liberty had thrown its 
glittering shadow across the ocean, drove terror into the hearts of old 
despcjtisms enthroned. The French soltliers who served under La 
Fayette, enamored of American liberty, discoursed freely of the rights 
of man. Even under Bonaparte the French army, then the grandest 
that ever marched undjr martial orders, dreamed themselves the army 
of the republic of France. At this juncture of atlairw there were two 
republics. The one a glorious organized revival of the rights of man, 
the other a mere shadow of liberty, an iijiius fatuus, that led a gicat 
6 



42 



STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [No. 24. 



army through the jaws of death in enthusiastic man-worship, under the 
delusion that this was the road to freedom. 

The republican enterprise of Mr. Jetierson met the imperial tactics 
of Napoleon, and tempted his ambition with money, whilst in fear that 
the interposition of England and Spain might wrest the prize from his 
hands. Jefferson secured the wealth of a continent from a conqueror 
who had made the foundations of the dynasties of ages tremble at his 
approach, who was casting the dice of battle for thrones, crowns and 
sceptres, to be distributed among his kinsmen. 

Such was the ignorance of the French respecting the magnitude of 
this great country, that Guizot, long after its acquisition by the United 
States, believed it possible for Euro})e to establish a balance of power 
in North America. Many years after the transfer of the Louisiana ter- 
ritory a memorial was presented to the king of Prussia, assuring the 
world that the growth of American repubacanism could be readily 
checked by a European alliance with the powerful tribe of Cherokee 
Indians, who would prevent the extension of our lines of civilization. 

Napoleon was tracing his conquests in lines of blood through the 
centuries of Roman grandeur, glory and heroism, to give to his family 
the thrones of the Ciesars ; turning away to the north he dreamed of 
dominion in the home of the Scythian. Spain, and iaelgium, and Naples 
were but as country seats in which to quarter his kinsmen. In the mad- 
ness of liis delirium, he surrendered to the republican president for less 
than one-fourth of the private fortune of our most wealthy American 
citizen, the most maguiiicent land ever transmitted by inheritance or 
bought with money. 

Tne Mississippi river, that reaches out her hands and gathers up the 
waters of the lakes, holds up the snow of the mountains to the sun 
until rivers, streams and rivulets gather from the extremities of a mag- 
nilicent land, the fountains of a vast inland sea streaming forth from 
the earth and watered by the clouds of a continent, with mountains 
tilled with tlie rictiest minerals, coal to propel the machinery of tlie 
world, and gold to conduct its commerce ; iron, lead and copper ; forests 
of timber, with a soil as rich as the valley of the Nile, which needs 
not its irrigation ; embracing a climate of every varied temperature, a 
braciniy atmosphere in the north, which creates nerves of steel, to revel 
in perpetual snows ; through wheat tields and corn tields, until the 
hemp blooms with the tobacco plant, and the cotton opens its pulps 
heneatli the shade of tiie orange grove, and the rice and sugar planta- 
tions are ripening in the realms of perpetual summer; the apple and 
cranberry, witii tlie liardy fruits at one end of the great line of railroads, 
the almond and tropical fruits at the other. Tnis great river, which 
gathers its streams from the mountain recesses of every part of tlie laud, 
is bound in closer bonds by railroads which drive their chariots of lire 
through every avenue of commerce and trade, and will make us the 
richest self government, the freest of all cultivated people. 

The grand system of valleys of which the Mississippi is the immense 
garden, walled by the AUegnanies on the east and tne Kocky Moun- 
tains on the west, bounded Hy lakes and gulfs, and environed by oceans, 
with the great pasture tields of the plains, and cattle ranches of Texas, 
must ultimately feed Europe and dictate laws to the LFiiited States — 
dictate laws in the broad, deep spirit of a land of such ph ysical 



1875.] STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



43 



grandeur. This land of ours was the first fruits of tlie reactionary influ- 
ence of our revolutionary war. This was the first foot of land ever ])ur- 
cbased or peacefully acquired from a sovereign civilized power in the 
history of the humau family for the purpose of dedication to constitu- 
tional government, and it was so guaranteed in the treaty which con- 
ferred it. 

This triumph of diplomacy over a government which was proud of 
the astuteness of its Talleyrand, would have secured immortality for 
the memory of any other statesman. But Jellerson had made himself 
immortal, Tlie Declaration of Independence will live as long as the 
English language and assist to preserve it. 

The administration of justice without oppression had attracted the 
friends of freedom of every government on earth to Jefierson, the chief 
magistrate. The act of religious toleration, written by the ])en of Mr. 
Jefierson, and incorporated in the laws of Virginia, would have crowned 
with immortality the life and memory of any statesman of antiquity. 
Neither so elaborate as Demosthenes' speech on the crown, nor made 
with such stateliness as Webster's plea for the American Union, nor 
80 magnificent as the great oration of Herod to the Jews to lay down 
their arms against the Romans, it was greater than any or all of them 
combined. This act was the golden key that unlocked the door of the 
State to religious liberty, and at the same time the bar of steel that 
closed the gate of the church to religious persecution. 

Between JSapoleon and Jefierson was the most remarkable contrast, 
never better drawn by human pen than by the following contrast, writ- 
ten by Mr. Jefierson in a letter to a cardinal at liome, February 14, 1810: 

* * * " Vour letter to the archbishop, being from Rome, and so 
late in September, makes me hope that all is well; and thanks be to 
God, the tiger who reveled so long in the blood and spoils of Europe, 
is at length, like another Prometheus, chained to his rock, where the 
vulture of remorse for his crimes will be preying on his vitals, and 
in like manner without consuming them. Having been, like him, en- 
trusted with the happiness of my country, I feel the blessing of resem- 
bling him in no other point. I have not caused the death of five or ten 
millions of human beings, the devastation of other countries, the de- 
population of my own, the exhaustion of all its resources, the destruction 
of its liberties, nor its foreign subjugation. 

"All this has been done to render more illustrious the atrocities per- 
petrated for illustrating himself and his family witii (blundered diadems 
and sceptres. On the contrary, 1 have the consolation to refiect, that 
during tlie period of my administration not a drop of the blood of a 
single fellow-citizen was shed by the sword of the law or war, and after 
cherishing for eight years their peace and j»rospi'rity I laid down their 
trust of my own accord, and iu the midst of tlieir blessings and impor- 
tunities to continue it. 

" Thomas JaKFKusoN." 

Such was tlie philosophy of the history of the acquisition of the mere 
territory upon which we have built tiie great State of Iowa. 

Such was the character of our ancestry, to whose long continued cul- 
ture of justice and liberty we are indebted for a country scarcely less 
to be coveted than the garden of our first parents. A government per- 



44 STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [No. 24. 

feet in every thing except those infirmities of administration by mere 
men. But how like the inferior animals are we in our notions of jus- 
tice and right. Each devours the other inferior to himself. Our treaty 
•with France gave us the naked right of discovery purchased, the right 
of home and possession the Indians had enjoyed for ages. 

For full three centuries the encroachments of the white man upon 
the Indian had been aggressive and augured of the extinction of the 
red race, leaving only here and there a remnant of the admixture wnth 
the superior race, to live in romance and song, of the Pocahontas tribe 
of Powhattan; or in the reigning of John lioss, of the Cherokees. 

Valley alter valley was yielded to the cupidity and growth of the 
Caucasian race, who first begged a place to pitch his tent, as a refuge 
from persecution, then begged a little ground to till and cultivate, to 
feed his children; then begged a little more for his persecuted brethren , 
who were flying from persecution under a dominion of kings and hie- 
rarchies. They wanted a little more for the church which brought 
Christ and his precious doctrines, with salvation ottered freely as the 
bubbling waters that ran down from the mountains, pure as the snows 
that melted and gushed down irom the mountain side. Then wanted 
more on which to build their churches; then wanted more to establish 
a government, to rule the churches and the people; then wanted more 
to tax and pay tithes and stipends to give to the church a more certain 
support; then wanted more to keep an army to enforce the gospel of 
peace, with a few soldiers, ever ready to cut the throats of men not 
willing to believe or ready to obey the peaceful doctrine of the gospel. 
In this small way did our honest fathers get their first fast foothold on 
the continent of the aborigines. 

But governments grow, power increases and becomes arbitrary: this 
was Archimedes' immovable fulcrum on which to place his lever to 
move the world. The Indians yielded; King Phillip gave way to the 
encroachments of the New England English; Powhattan yielded to 
the encroachments of the Virginia English. The Shenandoah, the 
most beautiful, romantic and fruitful of all the eastern valleys, was sur- 
]-endered by the Indian tribes without a battle or a massacre. That 
beautiful land surrounded by mountain palisades, and over-hung by 
vast and wildly clustered villages of rocks, became the peacefully ac- 
quired possession of the Caucasian intruder, who begged an entrance 
into the home of the Indian and then robbed the Indian of what he 
could not get as a successful mendicant for the begging. Moving west- 
ward in a solid and aggressive column upon the rights and homes of 
the red man, he approaches the sources of the Monongahela. Here is 
the grandest mountain plateau in all America; where, standing, you 
can cast a stone into the springs that gather the first waters that sweep 
away through the mountains of the southeast into the Potomac — wliich 
divided the free from the slave States — and swept through its rich valleys 
to the ocean; turning to the left, another stone could be cast into the 
waters of the Monongahela, which swifty gathered the waters which 
drained the western slope of the Alleghanies; turning again to the setting 
sun, a stone could be cast into the waters of the Kanawha and New 
rivers, which are the grand natural canals which concentrate the waters 
of the southwest into the Ohio; turning to the south, springs that burst 
forth as fountains swept in cascades to the James river, and mingled 



1875.] STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 45 

the cool mountain waters with the ocean. From this beautiful phateau, 
by a gentle descent, tlie traveler soon reaches the MinLjo Flats, out of 
whieli bursts the everlasting fountains of the Tygart Valley. This 
wild sublime scenery of the mountains — not excelled by anytliing 
drawn by the hand of romance — walled in by the last grand range of 
tlie Alleghanies, hundreds of feet above the level of the pl.acid stream 
which flows in ri[)pling Hoods beneath the mountain, then extends for 
nearly iifty miles, cultivated by a generous people. On the east, again 
walled by the great Cheat Mountain, on the very hight of the moun- 
tain, at nearly two thousand feet above the level of the Tygart Valli^y, 
the dark and treacherous Cheat river pours its mountain Hoods over 
precipices, and through ledges for miles, then sinks, leaving only sun- 
smote rocks to mark the natural pathway of the ancient river; after 
subterranean passages for many miles, like a flood, it bursts forth again 
to pursue its tortuous course over precipice and ledge. This rude, 
beautiful, wild and romantic valley was the birth place of Logan, the 
Mingo chief, whose plaintive appeal upon the murder of his family 
will live side by side with the oration of Judah to Joseph for the re- 
lease of Benjamin, and outlive all of the studied art of eloquence. 

From the Monongahela to tlie Muskingum, from the Aluskingum 
to the Sciota, from the Sciota to the Miami, and finally to the Wabash, 
were the tribes driven, to make room for the white man, who wanted 
only a little more land to extend his civilization. 

Tecumseh and his wicked brother, the Prophet — it is well to call 
him wicked, because he was not a Caucasian — w\as not our champion 
— fought against us — made the last bold stand that looked like national 
war to resist the encroachments of civili/.ation upon the natural rights 
of the Indian. The natural heroism of Tecumseh, united to the care- 
fully planned fanaticism of the Prophet, combined Avith the British in 
an organized Avar, was a systematic resistance, such as had never before 
been made by tlie Indians since the settlement of the northern portion 
of the continent. 

The prophet was another Mahomet, using only the power at liis 
command upon the superstitious nature of his j)eo))le, another Joe 
Smith, improvising the traditions of his tribes, another Miller, arousing 
the primitive nations to prepare for the Millennium of his race now at 
hand. The prophet was a bloody, vindictive <lreamer. Tecumseh 
dreamed not ; he had all of the ability of King Philip, all of the sub- 
lime independence of Logan, all of the jiersonal bravery of Cornstalk; 
he was more than the superior of any Indian chieftain who had lived 
before him ; he was to the Indians whom he commanded what Ilanni 
bal was to the Carthagenians, what Ca-sar was to the Romans, what 
Bonai)arte was to the French, what Cromwell was to the English ; ho 
failed only because he was the greatest of an inferior race, struggling 
against the superior. No mere human, however, gains a victory over 
nature. Defeat brought to life its worse vices — drunkenness, idleness, 
degradation. After the defeat of Tecumseh, the enterprise and its 
firstborn child — aggression of the white man — brought its [lower into 
immediate contact with the Indian. 

Then came Blackhawk, the last of the Shawnees, who had fought 
side by side with Tecumseli, whose people had been robbed of their 
lands by the cupidity of the white man and the treachery of the red 



46 STATE HISTOEICAL SOCIETY. [No. 24. 

man. No longer a proud people, with the history of their warriors 
preserved in the wampum belt and repeated on the battle-field, Black- 
hawk, partly in grief for the lost glory of his race, now melting away 
" like a snow flake on the river," and partly in desperation, organized 
an Indian army to prevent the occupation of their lands on the rich 
and picturesque Rock river valley. Believing that a contest here 
would — at least for a generation — postpone the settlement of the 
whites west of the Mississippi valley, Blackhawk made his Avar deter- 
mined and vigorous, but not with the usual savage cruelty known and 
practiced by the earlier tribes. But Blackhawk was overcome. The 
heroic frontier warrior, Henry Dodge., whose family had suffered from 
frontier cruelty, who had heard in the cradle the war-whoop of the 
Indians, in after years had wrested the tomahawk from their stoutest 
braves, defeated Blackhawk. So must it ever be, the inferior yielding 
to the superior race. 

Keokuk, Wapello, Appanoose, Kish-ke-kosh, Poweshiek, with 
the long list of chiefs, those who were hereditary, and those who 
received their position from their tribes, were simply so many children 
of nature, who grew up with the rosin-weed, and had wolf-dogs and 
ponies for their companies, hunted the buffalo, deer, elk, with the 
other wild game, and the wild fruits, died and left behind a progeny to 
perish like the wild flowers, with nothing to perpetuate their remem- 
brance among nations, leaving their memories among their tribes as 
names in a dreamy vocabulary upon which to ground a tradition or 
amplify an old legend. Nature is itself destructive, and produces 
only to destroy, and measures its powers to produce by its capacity to 
destroy. To this law man is no exception to the universal rule. The 
fish eats the worm ; the snake eats the fish ; the swine eats the snake ; 
man eats the swine. Men destroy each other until the first victim, the 
worm, eats the man, and finally the worm imitates the example of the 
men and devour each other. In this fearful circle of destruction na- 
ture produces, destroys, reproduces, and again destroys herself. 

American history has no more mournful page than that of the gradual 
disappearance of the Indians, the first proprietors ot the soil. The 
history of the disappearance of the Indian in civilized America is 
unique, uniform, sorrowful, and natural. The land was possessed by 
the Indian; the buflalo, elk, and deer were his herds, partaking of his 
nature, and participating in his nomadic habits. The bear, panther, and 
wolf prowled around his wigwam until the Indian made friends with 
the wolf, and imparted to him a domestication wonderfully like his own. 
The pony, wild as the Indian, served him well in the chase. The wild 
ajiple, plum, and grape, with those other fruits that disappear upon the 
a))i)roach of the plow and other ini])lements of culture, afforded to the 
Indian his pleasant summer sweets and acids; the wild man, the wild 
beast, the wild fruits lived and flourished together. But the white inan 
came, and before him the enchanting dream of peri)etual dominion fled 
as a vision forever. The buffalo heard the strange voice of the white 
man, and moved his herds as an army stampeding from the enemy. 
The Indian saw the I'etreating herd of buffalo, and mounted upon his 
pony — the reason was natural — the Indian's food and raiment was in 
the buffalo and kindred beasts. The wolf-dog followed the Indian, 
for he lived upon the oflal of the chase. Then came the change. The 



1875.] STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 47 

white man, close u])on tlie lieels of the Indian, coninienced his work of 
improvement and culture. Everythint; champed. There was a clianire 
in a<xriculture: the rosin-weed irave way to the corn-Held; the natural 
grasses were choked out by Timothy, Clover, and Hlue-ijrass. There 
was a change in horticulture: the crab apple yielded to the Rambo and 
Pi})piii; the wild plum was cut away to give place to the Green Gage 
and Damson; the wild sour grape, that clambered to the heights of great 
trees, or grew in swamps, was suj)p]anted with the Catawba and Concord. 
There was a change in the animal domestics: the Durham, Devon, and 
Aldtrney took the place of the buffalo; the flocks of Merino sheep 
sup|)lanted the wandering herds of deer; the Morgan and Connestoga 
in the stalls supplanted the Mustangs in the corral; the shepherd and 
St. Bernard stood as guards to the house and herds, instead of the 
wolf dog, useful only in the chase. There was a change in the jjopular 
habitations: the wigwam and lodge, the shelter of leaves and caves in 
the earth, gave way to the neatly furnislied cottage and spacious 
mansions, as the abiding homes of culture and industry. A change in 
education: the war dance and the chase gave way to schools, colleges, 
and universities. A cliange in religion: where the Indian woman stood 
in dread of the medicine man and the prophet of the tribe, and held her 
child as the offspring of fate, and worshipped in the gloomy rites of the 
Great Spirit, the wliite woman bears her child to the temple of the 
living God, and lays him a sacrifice upon the altar of Christ in ba])tism. 
There was a change in the immortality of hope; the Indian mother 
followed her dead to the burying grounds with a dim, dreary hope of 
meeting on hunting grounds far beyond the setting sun, returning with 
grief and broken heart, sobbing in accents of sorrow that iiKpiiry of 
Job, " If a man die, shall he live again?" where now the Christian 
mother, with bosom swelling with consolation as she bears her child to 
the tomb, repeating to herself submissively, T cannot bring him back, 
he cannot come to me. I can go to him, " For if a man die he shall 
live again, for I am the Resurrection and the life." liarbarism has 
given way to civilization, and the grim shadow of idolatry has given 
way to Christianity, and so it will ever be. 

The discovery of the Continent of America by Christopher Colum- 
bus, was the befrinning of a new era in the civilization of the world. 
Through the dim starlight of superstition and idolatry the earlier ages 
of our race had groped their way to knowle<lge. Conflicting legends 
had left in doubt the form of the earth, the origin of man, (piestions of 
geology, questions of anthropology, questions of mythology, and (pies- 
tions of theology were unsettled. Tiie light of the Gospel emitted but 
the twilight of Christian truth, its glimmering rays shone thmugh ]»ris- 
ons, inquisitions and star chamlters, uftei' the j)urer lights had been 
closed out by creeds — theocracies and hierarchies. The close of the 
Revolutionary war secured by law the freedom of conscience, with the 
liberty of conscience ; free incpiiry came as an effulgent liglit, science 
awoke from the slumber of ages, and like an agile army of travelers, 
penetrated every recess of the earth and the elements to discover new 
light. Freedom tore the fetters from the limbs of science, and in 
grateful return science has magnified freedom in giving her new pow- 
ers and grander era of action. The acipiisition of Fiouisiana was the 
declaration of the new doctrine of propagaudism borrowed from the 



48 STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [No. 24. 

early Apostles of Christianity. The success of the Independence of 
the United States was followed by an awakening of Liberty in every 
part of the civilized world. The old monarchies of Europe combined 
to make wars abroad to prevent their people from inquiring into the 
wrongs, oppressions and robberies of the government at home. 

South Ainerica caught the contagion of liberty from North America, 
and organized under Bolivar for the independence and freedom of the 
American Spaniards. Mexico, weary of being governed and robbed, 
then again robbed and governed by the Spaniards, arose from the 
nightmare of centuries and declared for the liberty of the Montezumas. 
Old Greece the land of Homer, of Socrates and Xenophon, the grandest 
temple ever reared to knowledge, for the weary centuries of the Chris- 
tian era had been smoldering in the tires of her desolation, overrun 
by barbarians, until the monuments of her illustrious children were 
mingled witli the unhewn stones of her mountains ; her philosophy, 
literature and science, transmitted in sparks, were now flaming in the 
mo8t gorgeous tires in every court in the civilized world. The children 
of Greece scai'cely knew the names of their illustrious fathers, whose 
glory had canonized them in Pantheons, and whose jDhilosophy and 
rhetoric made them masters of the world. But in this revival of the 
Spirit of Liberty, Greece awoke from the slumber of death, and de- 
clared for liberty. The spirit of her own Alcibiades, in response to the 
Metempsychosis of her own Pythagoras, reappeared in Lord Byron, 
who, with audacious sublimity, had rivaled Alcibiades in his contempt 
of morals, and had shamed Voltaire in his Iconoclasm, left his heredi- 
tary title in the oldest monarchy of Europe to lay down his life for the 
new republic of Greece. Scarcely had the spirit of Demosthenes awoke 
to drive away the marauding host of another Philip, until his own 
voice was re-echoing in the republic of the New World from the god- 
like Webster, and resj)onded to in the silvery tongue of Clay, demand- 
ing that the new re{)ul)lic of America should stretch out her helping 
hand to the old republic of Athens. 

Poland, inspired by the heroic example of Kosciusko, like a giant in 
chains, made one more terrible struggle to arise from her bondage. 
The South American States, like Mexico, scarcely realized a pure and 
lofty liberty ; Greece was overpowered by numbers ; Poland has been 
crushed, but the seeds of liberty have been sown — time will harvest 
them. The steady, growing light of Christian civilization, melting 
away the strength of arbitrary power, and at the same time moulding 
the minds of the oppressed to relieve themselves of oppression, will 
triumph. America will repay Europe. Europe gave to mankind an 
outlet for its growth, grandeur and liberty. In return, America will 
trans])lant liberty to grow luxuriantly in Europe. Lil)erty is the normal 
condition of man. This immutable law of a perfect government shall 
be asserted everywhere : "That which cannot be controlled must be 
destroyed." Despotism cannot be controlled and God will destroy it. 

Ireland, restive under the usurpation of the rights of her people, 
again and again has raised the banner of liberty and self-government, 
and the tyrants declare Ireland incapable of self-government. Did she 
fail? She did not. She was overpowered by the force of numbers, the 
combination of armies of hired as-assins, and the overflowing treasury 
whose cotters were tilled with money wrested from the toil of her own 



1875.] STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 49 

people. Witli wliat audacity must that champion of despotism spoak 
against liberty, Avho says the land of lieroes, philosopliers, ])oets, paint- 
ers, and statesmen, who have been alike distinguished in arts and arms 
in every civilized country under heaven, cannot govern herself If 
Ireland cannot, then can we? And if we cannot govern ourselves, 
pray, Avho shall govern us? Have we angels to govern us, or do kings 
govern the world so well that we can no longer govern ourselves. 

It is not true that there has ever been a failure by any people of Europe 
or America to govern themselves. It is not true that any despotism 
gave to any people so good a government as they would have enjoyed 
by self-government. In France the people have never had a trial of 
self-government. In all attempts at government by the people, they 
have been assailed by the surrounding governments of Europe, 
determined to preserve royalty as the basis of government. The three 
scrofulous remnants of effete families of tyrants — the Bourbons, the 
Orleanists, and Bonapartes — have prevented even the semblance of a 
just free government; the history is before you. This is true of the 
Spanish governments in Europe and America. 

In Europe republican government has never been inaugurated — 
republican government cannot conquer; between conquest and repub- 
lican government there is an eternal conflict; yet the republican system 
will ultimately prevail in every part of this continent. This is the just 
foundation of hope. One full century of extended and growing 
experience attests its success. 

Civilization, propelled by the knowledge of freedom and the freedom 
of knowledge, is the missionary angel flying through the midst of 
Heaven, preaching the everlasting gospel to the utmost parts of the 
earth. 

To Louisiana has been added Texas, to Texas California, to Califor- 
nia will be added the entire western part of Mexico, all ready, like rich 
ripe fruit, to fall into the lap of self government. The question of the 
extension of self-government is limited only by the progress of sup- 
planting the customs of an ignorant barbarious nation, with the 
materials for knowledge. 

The railroad and telegraph need only penetrate the heart of Mexico 
to bring her people into near neighborhood with republican govern- 
ment, to give courage, strength, and intelligence to her better classes — • 
to make republican government in Mexico, as elsewhere, a triumph 
over despotism. 

Gentlemen, I have lived during the period of the discovery and 
application of those wonderful civilizing powers which have extended 
the ]>ossibilities of free government among men. 

I am not old — yet I am older than the railroad and magnetic tele- 
graph; older than your state. I have seen but little, yet have I seen 
the triumph of the republican system in America — it will yet triumph 
in Europe. I have heard evil prophecies of the government, and each 
party and statesman is restive lest the government should <lie with him. 
The revolutionary soldiers from whose reverend lips the story of our 
first war fell upon my early mind are no more. 

I have seen statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, and public leaders 
swept down like leaves in a burning forest, yet the reptiblic still lives, 
outliving them all. For more than half a hundred years Fve seen yon 
1 



50 STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [No. 24. 

sun rise over the mountain forests, pass through floating clouds, and 
bathe his golden plumage in the mists of the ocean. 

Each year rising upon lands more beautifully adorned, a people more 
thoroughly enlightened and more jealous of their liberty, science more 
carefully studied and more thoroughly understood, each year expand- 
ing the area of liberty and extending the lines of free thought. Cen- 
turies may he travel in his course, but he will never set upon the rights 
of man or outlive the government of God, which is pledged to justice, 
truth and liberty. 



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